I recently wrote a piece explaining that there is a libertarian case for taking away Disney’s Florida privileges. However, I am writing this to stress that while strategically that is the appropriate approach, we must not throw out the baby with the bathwater.
Granting Disney these special privileges but not to organizations that may have been more amenable to the ideas of liberty is most certainly one step forward and two steps back, but nonetheless the one step forward does warrant some analysis. During its time with these privileges, Disney served as a valuable case study for the concept of a private city.
Part of Disney’s responsibilities in exchange for self-governance was that it was now responsible for its own security. We as Austrians regularly point to the theories of Rothbard and Hoppe as they pertain to the privatization of security, but Disney has given much more concrete evidence of the possibility.
Disney’s private security has permanent Emergency Operations centers, utilizing the same system as law enforcement agencies, and extensive two-way radio systems with more than 1,200 “cast members” employed in security operations. Disney achieves this almost invisibly as the security members are trained to blend in and seem as if they have appeared out of nowhere when they are needed.
Additionally, Disney achieves this at a lower cost than government security. The average police officer is paid between $27 and $32 per hour. Meanwhile, at Disney, the average security guard is paid between $11 and $17 an hour.
However, as Austrians we can recognize that that’s probably much more indicative of the natural price discovered through exchange. And despite paying so much less, Disney maintains equivalent security - if not better security - than just about anywhere else in the world.
Its security team additionally benefits from the fact that Disney has the strictest borders in the country - private borders. This fits exactly in line with what Hoppe has described of private cities:
No one is against immigration and immigrants per se. But immigration must be by invitation only.
And Hoppe goes on to say:
In a fully privatized libertarian order, there exists no such thing as a right to free immigration. Private property implies borders and the owner’s right to exclude at will.
This is exactly the position in which we find Disney. Disney’s borders had little to no discrimination. All that is required to receive the invitation that Hoppe insisted private borders is a payment of a little over one hundred dollars. With it came not only admission through the border but access to all the amenities their private city had to offer.
But from a security standpoint, Disney was able to screen every single resident (employee) and visitor of its private city. In their screening they even retrieve fingerprints, names, and contact information. This also allowed for more peaceful security at Disney because rather than having to resort to violence like a government security officer would, Disney security has the ability to simply remove from the premises those who had breached their rules.
For the sake of brevity, we cannot analyze every single benefit of the private city that is Disney World, but it is worth noting that it was not even close to limited to the benefits of private security enhanced by private borders. Disney’s famous Monorail served as just one of their private city’s answers to public transportation.
Disney has been responsible for its own sanitation and is - while not perfect - indisputably cleaner than any city of its size. Disney has its own fire department that has been exceedingly successful. Disney’s hurricane preparedness programs have led to it being named a StormReady® community. All this coupled with dozens of other examples that made Disney’s private community either competitive with or significantly better than any government run city.
Again, I stress that Florida was right to take away these privileges as they only catered to those who were enemies of further privatization and thus likely to detract from these benefits spreading. As a result, these benefits are not helpful in the long term when they are only allocated to organizations like Disney. However, I reiterate that we must not throw the baby out with the bath water as it is so important that we learn from and use the invaluable case study that is Disney and its private city.
